Day: January 13, 2011

How keen is your crozier? (Modified)

Coat of arms (shield only) of Francis cardinal...
George's coat of arms. Not kidding.

Eugene Kennedy does the Chicago cardinal up brown.

Questioning whether Francis George’s is “the keenest crozier at the conclave,” he recalls the great man’s initial meeting with psychiatrist Sara Charles, Kennedy’s wife.

“I’ve looked into your book” — Authority: The Most Misunderstood Idea in America — “and I’ll tell you where you’re wrong.”

“It’s too Jungian,” George began, but my wife cut him off: “There is nothing Jungian in it. It’s based on the work of the Catholic philosopher, Yves Simon.”

“It is?” the startled George replied but did not wait for an answer.

[It’s a 1997 book, co-authored by Kennedy, by the way.  We take Kennedy’s word for the implications here; he does not say when it happened or in what circumstances.  Not a receiving line, we must presume, for instance.]

Interviewing George as “the U.S. bishops’ thinker-in-chief,” NC Reporter’s John Allen “suggests that many Catholics would like to see Cardinal Law-like resignations from bishops who covered up or reassigned sex abusing priests.

To which George:

Law — who, as his great patron put him in line to become archbishop of Chicago as soon as he heard that Cardinal Bernardin had a fatal illness — “went into exile.”

I guess so, but remaining on six powerful Roman congregations, being in charge of a prestigious basilica and living in splendid apartments does not sound like Elba to most people.

[Yes.  Law blew it in Boston, got transferred (in style) to the home office.  George can’t or won’t get this.]

Asked if he was surprised that New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan was elected president of the U.S. bishops’ conference over then-vice president Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas,

thereby breaking the conference’s tradition of selecting its outgoing vice-president as its new president, George cuts right to the chase: “Yes and no.”

Oh my.  Painful to watch.

[As Gene K. presents it.  But the rest of what George said is important here, which I failed to check.  Sloppily.  After the easily criticized “yes and no,” George:

I expected [the election] to be very close, but . . . had assumed the custom would be followed. . . .  The discussion [about the election] was going on [among the bishops], and we [he and Kicanas] knew it. It was fed by many factors, which have been analyzed and discussed. Some interpreted it ideologically, but I don’t know there’s that much ideological difference. Some saw it in terms of different eras – new bishops and old bishops. Obviously, Bishop Kicanas has the capacity and the personality to be president of our conference, and so does Archbishop Dolan. Maybe some bishops simply thought, since both are worthy candidates, why should we be bound by a rule we didn’t make?

[This last sentence makes no sense that I can see, but at least he didn’t let it go at “yes and no.”  He also defended Kicanas as working “extraordinarily” hard at coordinating bishops’ committees, which is fair enough.  All in all, his remarks on this matter were forthcoming enough, if not persuasive.

[As for his wanting to study and read more in retirement, it was a relaxed interview and he was candid in a personal matter.  Retirement?  That’s the biggest issue raised in the whole article.  Does he mean to do so at 75, in a year?]

Lots more of what the cardinal said — and decide for yourself — at “Picking the brain of the U.S. bishops’ thinker-in-chief.“

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Not easy to be Catholic

Main entrance to Manhattan College. See also F...
Identity issue

Here’s a hot one.  This Catholic college can’t claim to be Catholic:

In In re Manhattan College, (NLRB, Jan. 10, 2010), a National Labor Relations Board regional director held that the judicially and administratively developed exemption from NLRB coverage for colleges whose purpose is the propagation of a religious faith does not apply to New York’s Manhattan College.

Its adjunct faculty wanted to unionize, the college claimed not be required to brook it.

The decision concludes that the evidence shows the purpose of the college is secular. It finds that there is little risk that exercising NLRB jurisdiction will lead to unconstitutional entanglement of government and religion because the “school’s stated purpose does not involve the propagation of a religious faith, teachers are not required to adhere to or promote religious tenets, a religious order does not exercise control over hiring, firing, or day-to-day operations, and teachers are given academic freedom…” [italics added]

The union had argued that the college “does not meet the test of a religious institution,” the NLRB bought the argument, in the face of this from the college president:

[T]he fact that we are a welcoming, pluralistic community is being presented as proof that we cannot be an authentic Catholic college. Questions about the number of brothers in various roles imply that the work of lay faculty, staff, and administrators is negligible in forwarding our mission, and betrays a complete incomprehension of a full generation’s hard and faithful work in passing forward the charism of religious orders to lay colleagues. [italics added]

Oh my, this “charism” business, which is trundled out whenever people notice that priests or brothers or sisters are distinctly minority figures on campus, as if years of training and lifetime commitment can be transfused to the unordained, the non-vowed, the non-religious-disciplined on demand.

The word should be banned in religious circles.

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